I loaded ARDUINO ESP8266 Version 0.41 into WinXP in VMware on OSX Mavericks

My Chinese USB to TTL-RS232 was labeled CTS where the example said RST
It would not do an automatic download.
I used the manual method - but the mini switches would not connect with my pin board and needed soldered wire extensions
So blink worked in the end.

So I can get data from the ESP from Debian Linux !!
- also OK on a Debian Joggler

But with Openwrt on NSLU2 busybox nc does not allow -u,
so
netcat was installed on top
opkg update - then - opkg install netcat
install was OK but after nc -u 192.168.0.244 9999
it just returns to the prompt

So I wonder if a Web server on the ESP would be better?

I could wget an ESP web page and then play with the string returned . . .

LETS TRY !!

The very basic webserver below from the examples is modified to send the variable const char* temp = "22.5";
Which I guess could come from a sensor

/*
* This sketch demonstrates how to set up a simple HTTP-like server.
* The server will set a GPIO pin depending on the request
* http://server_ip/gpio/0 will set the GPIO2 low,
* http://server_ip/gpio/1 will set the GPIO2 high
* server_ip is the IP address of the ESP8266 module, will be
* printed to Serial when the module is connected.
*/

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>

const char* ssid = "garden";
const char* password = "mypassword";

// Create an instance of the server
// specify the port to listen on as an argument
WiFiServer server(80);

}
//------------------------------------------------------------------------------------LOOP END

//------------------------------------------------------------------------------------FUNCTIONS
void handle_root()
{
string_to_send = temp1_as_string + " " + temp2_as_string;
server.send(200, "text/plain", string_to_send);
delay(100);
}
//---------------------------------------------------------------------
//function to extract decimal part of float
long getDecimal(float val)
{
int intPart = int(val);
long decPart = 1000*(val-intPart); //I am multiplying by 1000 assuming that the foat values will have a maximum of 3 decimal places
//Change to match the number of decimal places you need
if(decPart>0)return(decPart); //return the decimal part of float number if it is available
else if(decPart<0)return((-1)*decPart); //if negative, multiply by -1
else if(decPart=0)return(00); //return 0 if decimal part of float number is not available
}

- but my DHT11 sensors (on small boards from eBay)
gave crazy temperatures - I will test them on an Arduino ASAP

See the book! then these worked for me -

dht.lua - load first

-- ***************************************************************************
-- for communication of DHT sensor only
-- DHT module for ESP8266 with nodeMCU floating point
-- Written by Javier Yanez
-- but based on a script of Pigs Fly from ESP8266.com forum
-- MIT license, http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
-- ***************************************************************************